CHAPTER XXIII

The duchess was a good sleeper, as befitted a person of regular habits and pure life.

It was her custom to retire for the night at about eleven o’clock.  Angelina, who reposed in an adjoining room, would enter softly at nine in the morning, draw up the blinds, and deposit a cup of tea at the bedside of her mistress.  Up to that moment, she would slumber like a child.  Rarely did she suffer from insomnia or nightmare.  On this particular night, however, her rest was troubled by a strange and disquieting dream.

She was a little girl once more, at her parental home out West.  All the old memories were around her.  It was winter time.  She was alone, out of doors.  Snow, the familiar snow, was falling from a sombre sky; already it lay deep on the boundless plains.  It fell without ceasing.  The sky grew darker.  Hours seemed to pass, and still the flakes descended.  It was not cold snow.  It was warm snow—­warm and rather suffocating.  Very suffocating.  It began to choke her.  Suddenly she found she could breathe no more.  She gave a wild cry of despair—­

Her maid was standing beside the bed, a lighted candle in her hand.  Otherwise the room was in pitch darkness.  Angelina looked like a Tanagra statuette.  Draped in nothing but a clinging nightgown that reached two inches below the knee and accentuated the charm of her figure, with the candle-light throwing playful gleams upon her neck and cheeks, Angelina was an apparition to gladden the heart of man.

The heart of the Duchess was not gladdened by any means.

“What is the meaning of this, girl?” she enquired sternly, in what she took to be the language of the country.  “And in the middle of the night!”

“It’s nine o’clock, Madam.”

“Nine o’clock?  Then draw the blinds.”

“I’ve drawn them.”  She stepped to the window and tapped on the glass panes by way of confirmation.  “All dark outside,” she added.  “Ashes are falling from heaven.  The volcano is very, very angry.”

“Ashes?  The volcano?  I must dress at once.  Light two more candles.  No, three!  We can’t have three candles burning.  Don Francesco may be here at any moment.”

The Duchess often laughingly described herself as “only a weak woman.”  A certain number of persons concurred in that opinion.  Just then she was the most self-possessed inhabitant of Nepenthe.  The disturbance of nature left her undisturbed.  Her intellect was naturally incurious as to the habits of volcanoes; her soul, moreover, in good hands, her conscience in excellent working order, as befitted a potential convert to Catholicism.  She could rely on a spiritual adviser who had instilled into her mind a lofty sense of obedience and resignation.  Don Francesco would never desert her.  He would arrive in due course, explaining why God had allowed the volcano to behave in this unseemly fashion, and brimming over with words of consolation for his daughter-to-be.  God, if so disposed, could work a miracle and drive away the plague, even as he had sent it.  Ashes or no ashes, all was for the best.  Calmly she waited.